The unequal distribution of asylum seekers in The Netherlands

Will the new government make the struggles of municipalities to host migrants in humane conditions harder?

Asylum seekers sleeping outside of the Ter Apel center, because there is no space inside, August 2022. Photo: ANP

After the far-right party of Geert Wilders (PVV) became the biggest in November, he vowed to have "the strictest asylum policy ever."

However, as a member of the European Union, The Netherlands cannot unilaterally decide to stop or significantly reduce how many asylum seekers it takes in. Experts have warned that the plans to reduce immigration, to the extent the new government wants, are unrealistic.

In the meantime, before the government potentially manages to reduce the amount of asylum seekers to settle in The Netherlands, mayors of the different municipalities are worried about the uneven distribution of asylum centers: some municipalities host thousands of people, others zero. In some places, this has led to inhumane situations, where hunderds had to sleep outside because the center was full and there were no showers. In 2022, Doctors without Borders deployed its first ever team in The Netherlands because of the circumstances at an asylum center in Ter Apel, and called the fate of the people there "inhumane." Yet, a law designed to remedy this by more equitably distributing refugees throughout the country will likely be revoked by the new government.

This story visualizes how asylum seekers are distributed throughout the country, and shows how a minority of municipalities are bearing the brunt. For the number of asylum seekers per municipality, I created a dataset based on data from the Centraal Orgaan Asielopvang (COA), the body in charge of the asylum centers. For data on population density as well as income distribution, data from the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) was used.

This is The Netherlands: a Northern European country of almost 17 million people.

Per year, tens of thousands of asylum seekers flee war and persecution to come here. In 2023, there were almost 50.000, with Syrian as the most common nationality.

The country is divided into 342 municipalities. In them, there are roughly 200 asylum centers.

The bigger the circle, the more asylum seekers live there.

However, if you don't just look at the absolute number of asylum seekers, but take into account the inhabitants of the municipality, the story changes.

Out of the 342 municipalities, 206 of them don't host any asylum seekers at all.

Bringing in population density, asylum centers seem concentrated in sparsely populated areas.

Looking at how wealthy municipalities are, shows that some of the richest in the country do not host any asylum seekers, while poorer ones do.

To resolve the asylum crisis, the uneven distribution of asylum seekers in terms of numbers, population density and wealth, should be taken into account.